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The Next Big Thing:China’s floating city
United Kingdom Architecture News - Jul 04, 2014 - 22:19 3575 views
With museums, underwater hotels and a theme park, a new "floating city" is set to lure travellers to China's coast
A rendering shows AT Design Office's plans for China's floating city
Further evidence of China’s seemingly insatiable appetite for unconventional edifices comes with newly unveiled proposals for the development of a “floating city”, complete with underwater chambers and a self-contained ecosystem, off the country’s coast.
Its genesis stems from a successful partnership between Chinese engineering company CCCC and London-based architects AT Design Office. The groups collaborated on the development of Port City, a 230-hectare reclaimed island off the coast of Colombo in Sri Lanka, and now see the construction of floating, mobile landmasses as their next objective. CCCC has already developed “floating bridges” which it claims can be suspended in water without support, and this nascent technology will provide the foundation for its floating city.
An underwater view of the floating city Picture: AT Design Office
The four-square-mile urban centre will provide housing to residents of China’s overcrowded cities, but it is to serve primarily as a high-end tourist attraction. Tony Fan, design director of AT Design Office explains: “Chinese tourism investors want to create attractions that have never been seen before, and at the moment going under [and on] the sea is very attractive to the market. People in Britain might want to go to the beach to see the sun, there people want to go under the water. The demand looks very real; there’s a need and a dream there and they want to do it.”...Continue Reading
> via The Telegraph